Name: Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: small cucumbers; 1 tablespoon salt; cold vinegar

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

small cucumbers
1 tablespoon salt
cold vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Wash the cucumbers thoroughly.
Pack the cucumbers into a fruit can.
Add 1 tablespoon of salt on top.
Fill the can with cold vinegar.
Seal the can tightly.

Store

Store in a cool place; it will keep for a year.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers: Form the pickle itself, becoming crisp and tangy once packed in vinegar.
Cold vinegar: Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sour flavour.
Salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the cucumbers as they cure.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.